12/7/12

If you read The Lord of the Rings - and if you did, I'm sure I played Dungeons and Dragons with you in grammar school - you prolly remember that Treebeard (the tree-guy, duh) talked about "the Entwives", asking the halflings if they'd ever seen any "entwives" in their part of Middle Earth. Apparently they went missing at some point. They were probably burned with their gardens by Sauron in the War of the Last Alliance.

These freaky tree-ladies are probably supposed to be wearing Christmas-tree-shaped dresses, but all I see is Entwives. They also kind of look like Suzy Snowflake, which was an animated short from 1953 Suzy Snowflake is a weird Christmas fairy type of thing, and she floats around the rooftops putting frost on your windows. No word yet on whether she also does window tints. Anyway, the singing in that short is all creepy "wooOOO oooooOOoooo" harmonies and sends shivers down my spine. It's frikkin weird, and as such, I like it. WGN runs Suzy, as well as the other holiday pieces by Centaur Productions, Hardrock, Coco and Joe and Frosty the Snowman. Press play for a 2:36 slice of weirdness. Maybe you can see a resemblance between her and these Entwives.

You know what's weird? The Frosty cartoon by Centaur is the only one that's 2D - you know - hand drawn, flat cartoon stuff. Suzy and Hardrock are both stop-motion (physical miniatures posed and animated a frame at a time). Now think of the Rankin Bass holiday specials - Rudolph, Santa's Coming to Town, etc. They're mostly the same dimensional miniature stop-motion type of animation. Rankin Bass also made a Frosty special, and it was just a regular 2D cartoon, like Centaur's Frosty. Why did each studio make holiday specials mostly in stop-motion, except for their Frosty cartoons? Weird.

Two Frostys. Both flat. Both the lamest of each studio's holiday fare. Sorry, Frosty.

Frosty isn't the only Rankin Bass-produced cartoon, but it's curious that it was one of the few. And it was Centaur's only 2D short. Coincidence??? Of course! Don't be a dope.

She's definitely.... sigh....out of my league.

Aaaanyway, Treebeard (who also went by Fangorn, depending on who you talk to), carried a bit of a torch for the Entwives (metaphorically, of course, Ents are mostly tree, and as such, are not keen on fire), and since Ents live a pretty long time, that's a lot of torch-carrying. Well, it looks like they at least made it to 1959 to appear in this Coty perfume ad. And lemme tell you, if you've seen what an Ent looks like, you'll know that these tree babes could do better. Old treebeard must have been great in the tree-sack, because his face wasn't winning any contests.

So who's the artist? Let's go in for a closer look. Enhance!

John... Ko... minski? No. Ko... or maybe Ro... Romini? Rosmini? Komini? I got nothing, people. The P.A.G! research and Googling Brigade came up empty-browsered on any mid-century commercial artists named Rosmini, Rossini, Kosmini, etc. If and Alert Readers have better luck, please post the name in the comments.

MEMO: All of this year's requested Exmess cards have gone out, but there are still some left, so email us if you want one. You might as well, because they fold into terrible airplanes.